Page 42 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
My teaching career, too, had given way after one blow from the Arkansas legislature, when they’d declared basically any book written by, or about, African Americans was the scary bogeyman they conjured out of whole cloth: ‘CRT’—and I guaran-damn-tee you not a single one of those chicken-fried good ol’ boys in the Legislature have the foggiest notion of either what Critical Race Theory actually is or what actually happens in K-12 classrooms.
Hint: it’s not CRT. Ever. Nor is it “grooming” when teachers assign book that include LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Indoctrination isn’t going on in public-school classrooms, unless you count compulsory recitations of the Pledge—or there wasn’t before legislative reactionaries got hold of it. Indoctrination happens when information is narrowed to one point of view, not when it’s widened to include many. Ahem.
Anyway. I hadn’t intended to puke politics all over this talk. I will always be salty about losing my career for the offense of being good at it, but the point right now is that I lost it. Wyatt was the only real thing that happened in my whole life away from Bluster. Now I was back here, with almost nothing to my name but the shitty motel that had been my prison for my whole childhood.
I wanted to make itmine. I wanted to turn it into something my mother could never have dreamt of.
I wanted to makeherthe failure.
And if I didn’t, if all I did was sell the business that had been in the Braddock family for three—now, with Wyatt, four—generations and use the proceeds to rebuild my life, that felt likerelying on my mother to take care of me. Hanging around her neck, just like she always said.
Thatwas how she would win if I sold.
But how could I not? Even if I sold every single stick of furniture, every book, every dish, every stitch of clothing, the car, all of it—my own things and the things she’d left behind—even if I emptied my retirement account and the little bit of money Wyatt and I had scraped up fromalreadyselling most of what we’d owned, I’d be lucky to pay half that bill. And then I’d have nothing to live on, much less restore the Sea-Mist.
Sensible Leo in my head lowered her megaphone and nodded sagely.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered aloud. “But you’re the one who thought you had it all together two years ago, so what the fuck do you know?”
I was so wrapped up in my schizophrenic mental argument, I didn’t see the whole-ass steel bumper lying in the road until I was just about on it. I swerved sharply—I was alone on that stretch of road, which was lucky, since I didn’t look before I swerved—but didn’t quite get around it. The Golf went over the end of the bumper with a sickening series of thumps.
My mental chaos forgotten, I was fully focused on the car and the road as I drove on, checking the rearview often to see if any parts of my car were about to fall off, or if I was leaving a scary wet trail in my wake. Nothing fell or dripped onto the road. After half a mile or so, I started to relax, thinking I’d had at least one small stroke of good luck.
That was when the tire pressure light went on.
Obviously.
AS FAR AS I COULD TELL, only one tire had been ruined by my little mishap—and that was good, because I only had oneemergency donut tire. Also lucky: sensible, mature Leo knew how to change a tire and always made sure the spare was in good shape. Still, by the time I pulled into my driveway, in addition to the stress I’d started my drive home with, I was also dirty, frustrated, exhausted, and half an hour later than I’d told Wyatt was the latest that he could expect me.
Roman’s truck was parked in front of the cabin. That was unexpected. We’d spent most of Saturday together, going down with Wyatt to Eureka for lunch and a turn through the Arcata Farmers Market, and we’d texted through most of Sunday while he worked at his shop and Wyatt and I got Cottages 2 and 3 in shape, but we hadn’t spoken today and had no plans to see each other. In fact, knowing about my meeting with the mayor, Roman had told me he was there if I needed him, but he’d wait to hear from me.
My feelings upon seeing his truck were ... complicated. A whole lot of relief, first and foremost. I wasn’t sure what I wanted of Roman beyond attraction and companionship, but those were powerful draws. If nothing else, with Jessie out of town since almost the moment I arrived and Erin still not speaking to me, Roman was my only friend in Bluster. I enjoyed his company very much; he was kind and good-humored, and, best of all, he was mellow. I am not mellow, no matter how far you stretch the definition, but together we balance each other out and arrive at an enthusiastic kind of calm.
And yes, he isreallyattractive, in that comfortable, unassuming way that draws attention without demanding it.
But all that waswhymy feelings were complicated. Especially right then, as I climbed out of the Golf, rumpled and smudged with road dirt, my head full of fretful noise about the Sea-Mist, my past, and Wyatt’s and my future. Roman is a natural caretaker, and right then,god, I wanted to be taken care of. I wanted somebody to lift all my crap off my shoulders and setit up on a shelf I couldn’t reach, so I couldn’t try to pull it back onto myself, so I couldn’t even see it anymore.
But there was Micah, standing in the shadows of my mind, a reminder of what happened when I let somebody take care of me. And farther back in the gloom, my mother, nodding with obvious satisfaction; she’d always known I was incapable of doing anything on my own.
I’m explaining what was going on in my head so maybe what I did a few minutes later makes some kind of sense.
I went into the cabin, but nobody was in there. As I moved into the kitchen, though, I caught a whiff of smoke and meat. I went to the window over the sink, which looks out at the pretty, park-like area that serves as our ‘back yard’ and the common area for the cottages. Where the fire pit, a few picnic tables, and some Adirondack chairs are.
Roman and Wyatt were back there, standing near the fire pit, on which was arrayed a fine selection of steaks and skewers. Roman had a bottle of Corona in his hand, and Wyatt also had a clear bottle in his hand. A clear bottle of—what the fuck, did he give my fifteen-year-old son a—Orange Crush.
The nearest picnic table had a red-and-white-checked cloth spread over it. A short stack of plates and flatware sat at one end. On the ground at that end was an aluminum tub full of ice, beer, and soda.
Well. He’d made himself right at home, hadn’t he?
I stood at that window and watched them talking and laughing together. I couldn’t really hear their actual words from where I stood, but it looked like Roman was teaching Wyatt about grilling.
Micah had been a fairly competent camp cook, but he had not been a grillmaster. I’d been the cook of the family, and I knew my way around a grill, but Wyatt had never expressed much interest in helping me out. He’d clean up without complaint, buthe’d never asked to learn to cook or taken me up on my offers of lessons.
Something about his rapt attention while Roman spoke, gesturing occasionally with the tongs in his hand, set off an alarm bell in my head. No, not an alarm bell—a freaking air-raid siren.
He was moving straight into my life, both mind-versions of me screamed in unison. Taking over, taking control. Taking control of myson.
I stormed to the back door, shoved the screen door open, and stomped down off the porch. Wyatt and Roman both smiled when they saw me, and their expressions were just beginning to morph into confusion at whatever my face was doing when I shouted, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
